Chapter Nineteen.
The Sky Clears.
Once more in the wagon, one ox a pair of despondent prisoners, hot in temper as well as in person with the excitement of what he had so lately gone through, West cast himself down upon the floor ready to groan, while his more experienced, harder comrade sat down cross-legged to think.
“If I only knew where the coat was!” said West, with a groan.
“Hah!” sighed Ingleborough. “I’m afraid it’s gone for ever! That Kaffir was one of the Boers’ slave-like servants, of course, or he wouldn’t have been in the camp; and after the attempt at theft, if he was not too badly wounded, he would bolt right off for his own people. It’s a sad business, old lad: but I don’t think you need fear that it will fall into the Boers’ hands.”
“No, I don’t fear that!” replied West. “But it is the misery and shame of the failure that worries me! I did so mean to succeed!”
“Hah! Yes,” sighed Ingleborough again; “but someone said—hang me if I know who!—‘’Tis not in mortals to command success.’ You’re only a mortal, old fellow, and you must make the best of it.”
West groaned.
“It’s horribly hard; just, too, as I had hatched out a way of escape,” continued Ingleborough.